Abortion Protesters, Even Here in Mass.

The Globe reports today that Boston City Councilor Michael Ross is proposing an outright ban on picketing outside residences, a response to anti-abortion groups' custom of showing up at abortion clinic staffers' homes. The protesters, naturally, cry foul and claim that their freedom of speech is being curtailed. Joseph Scheidler, the director of the Pro-Life Action League promises in the article that if such a ban is enacted, his folks will violate it and take the matter to court. This actually makes Bostonist feel a little bad for the foolish, earnest protesters who will follow Scheidler's orders and face criminal consequences: They're clearly numbskulls and we don't expect any kind of legal knowledge from them. But the director of a national anti-abortion group ought to know that the court case he's proposing is a sure-fire loser.

As it turns out, the Supreme Court has said on numerous occasions that governments can impose all sorts of restrictions on citizens' rights to protest. The general rule, dating back to 1941, is that reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of a public protest are OK, so long as they are content-neutral (e.g., pro- and anti-abortion rallies are subject to the same rules) and do not entirely rob a protest of its expressive force (e.g., if abortion protesters were only allowed near clinics when the clinics were closed, or were required to conduct their protests in places where no one would see or hear them).

And in case abortion protesters were hoping that the "reasonable time, place, and manner" rule might not be applicable to them, they can forget it: Buffer zones around abortion clinics, like the kind we have here in the Commonwealth, have already been ruled constitutional. (Currently, Mass. requires protesters to stay six feet away from people entering clinics unless they get permission to approach. The legislature is considering a proposal to create a fixed 35-foot buffer zone, something the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on.) And laws prohibiting protests aimed at particular residences are OK too.

So basically, all this tough talk about challenging laws sounds like ignorant posturing to Bostonist. Then again, the majority opinion in the case upholding bans on residential protesting was written by the soon-to-be-retired Sandra Day O'Connor, who also concurred in the case allowing buffer zones outside clinics. Perhaps Scheidler and his anti-abortion colleagues are feeling optimistic about her replacement.